


invisible string (tying you to me)

by hey_1723



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F, Soulmates, Taylor Swift inspired, Timelines, idk what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25794676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hey_1723/pseuds/hey_1723
Summary: Isn't it just so pretty to think, all along there was some invisible string, tying you to me?
Relationships: Tobin Heath/Christen Press
Comments: 4
Kudos: 127





	invisible string (tying you to me)

You don’t realize, the first time.

Because you’re exhausted from the full ninety, the final one you’d play in your college career, in that same kit that your teammates say is three sizes too big but you claim it gives you room to move.

And you did it. You  _ won. _

All you can see is a sea of beaming bright blue and deep red with their sunken shoulders and sullen expressions and you’re the opposite, being lifted up to where your feet can’t touch the ground, joyous and exuberant and proud.

And you see her eyes fall even from yards away, the strikingly beautiful and dangerously talented forward uniformed in white, and for a moment you wish you were the one that had lost, because you  _ know _ .

You know what it’s like to lose, to work so hard for something and have it be so close, only to watch it all slip through your fingers like sand into water.

The devastation she’s experiencing right in this very moment is familiar, and you tell yourself later that that’s exactly what makes you compelled to console her, extend a hand and tell her that she did everything she could (and that it wasn’t her fault for being offside for that goal, the refereeing at the women’s collegiate level just wasn’t anywhere close to where it needed to be).

When you work up the courage to go and congratulate her for a game well fought, she can’t even look you in the face. 

You don’t dwell on it, even though it stings a little, because you deserve this, and you don’t even know her.

But the string threads the needle, like it always does, and you feel something tugging at your chest.

\---

If you’d listened to your mother, you would have learned that the thread of fate works in mysterious ways that you may never see coming. If you’d listened, you probably would have realized the second time.

Because you’re years older and perhaps years wiser, but you know what they say; old habits die hard.

You have a thing for ignoring the signs.

So, you don’t realize the second time, either.

Because you introduce yourself to the new player at the national team camp and the feeling of her hand in yours as you greet her feels so familiar, but you can’t seem to remember where you know those eyes from.

Deep green, bottomless seas of jade, this time without the irreparable heartache but with all the same hunger and determination as before.

And then you remember.

“I’m Christen,” she says. You feel the tug.

“I know,” you reply, because saying anything else would be futile.

\---

You still don’t realize, even later.

When you’re inseparable, when conversation is so easy that you forget you actually haven’t known her for years.

Known her habits and fears and dreams.

And known her little pajama shorts and suitcase packed to complete perfection and skin that smells like coconuts and her crooked smile, her careful style of play and relentless attitude and why she doesn’t have a signature goal celebration (she says it’s the one time she doesn’t have to think, and you like that about her: she’s always calculating, thinking, planning).

  
  


Known how easy it is to communicate with her, the ball travelling seamlessly between your feet and hers. In practice, in games, when it’s just you two on the field, hours after practice is over.

You understand each other, and it’s all so easy, to put it simply. 

It always is, with her.

\---

You learn to trust each other.

Because she’s seen you at your worst, battered and bruised and broken, but also at your best.

And you meet her on the field sometimes, even in the middle of the night, where you know she always is and you watch, because you know she’s frustrated and angry and bitter because how could this have happened? 

You support her, as you always do and as you always will.

  
It doesn’t feel like enough. But her smile shines in the near-complete darkness and fills a part of your chest that you didn’t even know was empty.

\---

Her voice is a lullaby as she speaks softly in the full room, and you feel an ache in your chest at the severity but gentleness of her words, and you look around and wonder if anybody else feels it too.

They don’t, but you don’t know that then.

You still don’t realize.

\---

You don’t realize when she calls from halfway across the country because she saw something that reminded her of you, and you didn't even know you guys were close enough friends for that sort of thing.

You don’t realize when all of the sudden someone else is flirting with her across the bar, conjuring up an unfamiliar and uncomfortable mix of emotions that sort of feels a little bit like jealousy? 

You don’t realize when you can look across any room and know where to find her eyes, because she’s the most beautiful person you’ll ever see for as long as you breathe.

You don’t realize when you find yourself wishing she was here to watch these beautiful Oregon sunsets, because you know she’d appreciate them like you do.

You don’t realize when she remembers to send you your favorite type of flowers on your birthday, and it’s funny, because you can’t recall telling her that but she somehow remembers, like she always does.

You don’t realize when she teaches you about the stars, because you finally feel like you  _ understand _ all those folktales and stories about the stars that are destined to be so far apart, but nevertheless hurtle through space and time towards the most beautiful collision. 

You don’t realize when you feel it, because you always feel it around her, that feeling of inevitability. The sense that you’d always love each other, in that platonic sort of way. But she catches your eyes and you can’t see anything else, crossing that threshold from friendship into something so much more.

You don’t realize, but you have always felt the tug, like something is pulling gently on the strings attached to your heart, drawing you to her.

\---

Confetti falls from the sky, but it flies, at first.

The reds and whites and blues take their time and wander on this, their only chance to soar through the air like the yellows and oranges of autumn.

Reflecting sunlight, twirling, sailing, fluttering in the wind.

So you leap and skip in an attempt to catch every last piece before it hits the grass. You fall on your back next to her, making snow angels among the colorful strips of paper.

You want to lean in closer, just enough so your arms would brush gently together. To touch. And you wonder if she’d even notice.

And suddenly, it all makes sense.

It’s terrifying, the realization that you might love her, something so foreign to you that you don’t even know how or when or why it happened. But you think back to that final, all those years ago.

You remember catching eyes with her on the pitch over a decade ago, and that’s how you finally realize. You realize you knew, even then, that you loved her.

Because maybe you were always meant to do it together, the winning.

Not just you celebrating alone as you watch her shoulders sink and her eyes fall from the other half of the field, but maybe you were meant to celebrate with her, standing atop the podium feeling like you are on top of the world, so vastly different than what happened all those years ago.

Even if you lost, you still would have felt like you won, because you have her in your life.

And all you want to do is kiss her, but what you want to say right now would shatter this, words so simple but so destructive. So instead you gather confetti in your arms and throw it into the air. 

And as she runs back through the pieces, they catch like gold in her hair.

It’s like sunlight seeping through the treetops and feeling the warmth on your skin after a long storm, it’s like coming home after a long day’s work, it’s like every perfect feeling you’ve ever felt in your entire life.

Because finally you know what the tug is, and when she meets your eyes, laughing freely without a single care in the world, you know she feels it too.

\---

And now it’s later, years later, and somehow you fall more and more in love with her with each passing day.

You lay on the blanket spread out on the grass atop the hill, watching the sunset. Together, like you’d imagined so many times, her head in your lap.

Bodies fitting together so perfectly it’s almost ridiculous.

“Do you ever think about it?” she asks, looking up to meet your eyes.

“About what?”

“Us.”

And you do, think about it.

“What about us?”

“The string,” she says simply, wringing her hands together like she always does when she’s thinking.

You smile, because you know exactly what she’s talking about. The invisible string. 

You nod.

“Isn’t it pretty?” you say, because you lost your way all the way to her, and in her you found all the way back to yourself. 

She smiles, and you feel the tug again, only this time you know who’s on the other end.

**Author's Note:**

> this has been bopping around in my head for about a week now, ever since taylor swift dropped the surprise album, so here you go! hope you enjoy


End file.
